


Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep

by saavik13



Category: The Blacklist (TV)
Genre: BAMF Elizabeth Keen, Eventual AU, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-13
Updated: 2015-05-12
Packaged: 2018-03-30 07:38:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3928468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saavik13/pseuds/saavik13
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Liz has been preparing for something her whole life - she just doesn't understand what.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Bells

“Why do I have to learn this?” Lizzie’s voice is petulant and whinny, her lower lip is sticking out and chewed red from concentration as much as pouting. They’ve been at this for hours, but Sam won’t let her fail at it. He can’t. She might need to know this someday, to survive, if what’s coming for her ever finds her – and he’s more sure now than ever that one day it will. Ray is doing what he can to shield her, to shield all of them, but eventually the past always catches up and he wants her ready.

 

“Sweet cheeks,” he says fondly, setting the wallet back into the dummies pocket and doing it just right so that the bells in the suit never jingle. “I know it’s hard, but someday you might need to know this. It could be important.”

 

Lizzie crosses her arms and glares around the old auto-shop they are currently living over. It’s abandoned, off the grid, and she’s not happy about missing her tv shows or having to leave her last school. Sam’s not happy about it either, if truth be told, but that guy in the black sedan wasn’t one of Ray’s and he’s not taking chances. While Ray tracks the guy down they are hiding out, and that too is a skill he wants her to learn. So much to teach her and he’s not sure if they have the time. “Come on honey, give it another try- for daddy.”

 

That makes her roll her eyes and Sam has a pang at how fast she’s growing. It’s all unicorns and cartoon ponies now, but soon it will be boy bands and dances and he may have to kill the first bastard that touches her.

 

But for now she flicks her pig tails back behind her shoulders, squares them up, and eyes the dummy with a reluctant determination that is her hallmark. She’ll get this – Sam can feel it. She’ll get this like she got all the other things he’s taught her. She can pick a lock, con a cop, and shop lift with the best of them. Right now that’s what she’d need if she had to run without him, survive until Ray could get to her. Right now those are the important skills to learn and she can catch up on her school work when it’s safe to come back out into the real world.

 

She takes a deep breath and starts her walk and this time when she does the lift not a single bell jingles.

 

He sweeps her up and twirls her in the air, knocking the dummy over in a cascade of bells and they laugh, and whoop, and he hugs as tight as he can. His little Lizzie, his most precious job, and one he’ll gladly die for. He kisses the top of her head before she runs over to set the dummy back upright to go again – because that’s also Lizzie, even when she whines she can’t stop till she knows she’s got it – and he watches her practice again and again and again.

 

He hopes she never needs the things he’s teaching her, the things he’s got others lined up to teach her when he’s passed on all he knows. He hopes she never understands why he insists on all this, on why it’s so important. He hopes all she ever uses it for is cheap lipstick and a good laugh like his sister. He hopes – he prays – that she gets to be that lady cop she wants to be, like that pair on the tv. What a gas that would be, the thief’s daughter a cop. Maybe, if Ray’s plan works, and he lives long enough, he can see her become whatever she wants to be. God how he wants that. But for now he’’ll take this while he can, her chewing her lip and lining up against nothing more sinister than a thrift store suit with some bells in the lining. Because the things that are out there, the things that want his little girl, they won’t know what hits them if he has anything to say about it.

 

Lizzie will be ready, Sam vows, he’ll make damn sure of it.

 

* * *

 

 

Liz has never been good at self-restraint when there is something she covets at stake and a decent chance at not getting caught. Especially if there doesn’t seem to be much to gain in denying herself. Her father’s the same way, and Liz has often wondered if it was his influence, the criminal influence, that made her that way or if she was just born to it – which could be the same thing for all she knows.

 

Oh she’s good at controlling herself when she needs to – she can sit still for hours hiding, she can control her breathing and regulate her heartbeat, she can move silently through any room or any terrain, and she can improvise about any emotion she needs to at the drop of a hat. But that’s not her personal life, that’s the job, and off the job Liz wants what she wants. She’s lucky it isn’t material things she craves, that she covets things more hard to come by. The rush of a chase, the thrill of a con, the feeling of getting one over on somebody – that’s her downfall and she knows it.

 

She lost her virginity at the ridiculously young age of 12 to a simply gorgeous if clueless high school football player in the back of a truck and never really looked back. While other girls worried about their reputations, Liz had quietly gone about her business. Any partner that spread gossip quickly found out what a bad idea that was, and after a while she had a small but reliable network of tension relief. It didn’t affect her grades, didn’t cost her any friends, and it didn’t do more than get her a few calculating looks from the football coach, and the rewards were well worth that. It helped that they moved around a lot until the cancer came, so she never had to juggle any one group for too long. If Sam ever guessed what she was up to, he apparently didn’t find it necessary to comment, and since Liz was smart enough to use protection, there was never a need for things to get complicated.

 

College was in many ways more difficult. People were pairing up with serious intent and her loose and casual partners inevitably got <i>ideas</i>. It wasn’t that she was opposed to ‘real’ relationships, exactly, just that her tastes in most things ran to variety over depth and sex was no exception. She liked to have options, depending on her mood, but not to take risks. She liked to know her partners, trust them at least a little- friends with benefits over one-night stands. But a friend wasn’t a boyfriend and certainly not a love interest, and even though she was always careful to draw that line early they didn’t always listen, or remember. Her pension for bad boys didn’t help matters, and while she had no problem spending a few hours with them a lifetime seemed rather ill-advised for a want-to-be-FBI agent.

 

In hindsight it was all probably Sam’s fault – what with his rather loose interpretation of societal mores. He’d always professed that if it wasn’t hurting anybody, it wasn’t anybody else’s business. There’d been plenty of women in and out of his life over the years, never really serious, often family friends of a sort, and Liz hadn’t ever really considered settling down. Why should she? What good did settling down do anybody? Mortgages, car loans, screaming babies – what about that sounded like a good time?

 

It wasn’t until she was working on her master’s that she realized how the rest of the world really worked. How normal people did things. How much she differed from that – in nearly every way. She’d always been different, and it had always bothered her that she’d never quite fit in with the other kids growing up, but never enough to change. Her father and his friends were always there, and with them she never had to worry about fitting in. They didn’t care what clothes you wore or what band you liked. They only cared that you weren’t going to blab around town what they were up to – that you played things close to the vest. They knew they could count on her or Sam to keep their mouths shut when it mattered, and in turn they cut her father in on a few things now and again.

 

She’d done a few jobs, here and there, for practice her father said. To build up a nest egg, he claimed. While she loved the rush of it, she knew that not all the jobs were as well planned as the ones she went out on. Sometimes good people got hurt – sometimes the targets didn’t deserve what happened. Her father knew she wanted to ‘switch sides’ as he called it, and he thought it was just fine. “You go be whatever you want to be, LizzyBee.” He said. “Either way you go, you got the skills you need. I made sure of it. And I love you no matter what.”

 

As the years went on, and she saw less and less of her father and his friends, as her studies progressed, it became clear the penalties for being different. There were very real career and social ramifications of not having that car loan, of not at least pretending to look for mister right. Normalcy was what everyone else was doing, or at least trying to do, and it got harder and harder to even make small talk. Friends stopped calling as often. Classmates ignored her when they ran into each other off campus. And even the friends-with-benefits-bad-boys were getting harder to find without looking in places she didn’t really want to go.

 

Liz didn’t like sitting alone in the honors cafeteria. She didn’t like people looking at her funny and talking behind her back. And, even though it hurt to admit it to herself, something in her yearned to fit in just for once – to not have to worry about hiding untraceable cash just in case, to not have a bag packed with your essentials ready to bolt if you have to. To have a house and a dog and 2.5 kids. Because that’s what you are supposed to want –right? That was  _normal_ and it would be so nice, if just for a little while, she could be normal. Be just like everyone else. She started to yearn for that so badly she would dream of it at night, of just being a normal grad student, with normal grad student problems, a normal girl with normal dreams and normal plans and normal everything.

 

So when Tom entered the picture and offered all that up in an attractive and available package, a<i>normal</i>, package - when the recruiters for the FBI mentioned the importance of being well rounded and grounded, that they specifically looked for people that had stable home lives that could help them handle the stress – she went for it. A part of her felt guilty for using him, knowing she wasn’t really in love, not the way normal people could be in love. She wasn’t even sure she was capable of that. But she was a profiler. She knew what it looked like and she could fake it. And faking it meant she would get what she’d always wanted – a chance to be in the FBI, to make a difference. All the glory of the chase and only the bad guys would get hurt. She could be a good wife to Tom if it got her that, she could pretend, make them all believe, make herself believe….

 

For a long time she did.

 

Reddington brought it all back. The rush of that life – the joy in it. The freedom of unconventionality. All the wonderful glorious hedonistic pleasures of  _not_ being normal. He made them all okay again – like her father had.

 

Old itches that had never quite left her returned.  And she dreamed of bells. 


	2. Profiles

 

“That one there, in the green jacket. Tell me about him.” Sam asked, taking a sip of his beer.

 

Lizzie scrunched her nose up and took a big gulp of her milkshake. They were in a small little town just outside Willington, taking advantage of the summer evening to sit in restaurant’s patio and do a little practice.

 

“He’s married,” Lizzie supplied slowly, “he keeps twisting his ring – he’s nervous.”

 

“What else.” Sam prompted. “What’s he nervous about?”

 

“He keeps looking at the hotel.” Lizzie cocked her head to the side and rolled her eyes. “Too easy, dad. He’s waiting on someone – he’s having an affair.” Just then another man walked up and green jacket nodded at him. Green jacket man went inside and the other man started down the street. “He’s gone in to get the room.” Lizzie narrated, narrowing her eyes at the new comer. “And he’s going to wait a few minutes before following him up. They must have a routine.”

 

Sam smiled. “That a girl.”

 

She grinned. “Give me another.”

 

“Okay, what about her – the waitress over there.” Sam motioned behind him with a quick backward nod. “What can you tell about her?”

 

Lizzie rolled her eyes. “Come on dad, at least give me something a little hard. She’s stealing from the register, changing tickets around, to pay for her gambling. It’s sooo obvious I spotted it before we even _ordered_.”

 

To her, Sam acknowledged, it probably was. It had taken him a month to sus out all the town’s little secrets and Lizzie could do it in an afternoon. But that was his girl. Ray wasn’t sure about all of it, if it was a good idea to teach her about this world, but Sam figured it could only help her – even if for now the threat seemed neutralized. They’d be settling down soon in Omaha, a little place his sister found for them all squared away. Lizzie could finish out high school in one place and Ray had a scholarship all lined up for her when she was ready. They’d need the structure if those tests results came back like he suspected they would. Lizzie would need her aunt there if things got bad. Sam wasn’t worried about himself – he’d been prepared to die for years, just wasn’t expecting it to be cancer that took him. But he didn’t want her to have to watch it all. He knew Lizzie, and she wouldn’t leave him, so settling down in Omaha had to be the compromise. At least Ray had done what he could to draw attention off them. There hadn’t been a sighting or whiff of anything about them for years – no one was left looking for them.

 

Lizzie chomped on her fry lazily and then slurped her milkshake. Sam grinned at her and pointed to the old pickup truck parked in front of the hardware store. Lizzie smirked and started in….

 

* * *

 

 

Tom wasn’t a slouch in bed, she’d give him that. But it was just so…. Boring. Same man all the time. Same positions. Same endearments. Same angles and kinks and roles. Liz rather missed picking up someone new, the rush of getting their attention, the subtle danger in it – the dance of will they won’t they – the flash of perverse pleasure at being the instigator against convention. The heady days of an early romance when neither knew exactly what to do with the other. The look of surprise on their face when she took charge, the delight in their eyes when she made them work for it.

 

Tom didn’t like it when she was too aggressive in bed. Complained when she knocked him into the wall a little too hard. Didn’t like it when she left too many marks. _What WOULD the other teachers say?_

 

By the time the truth about him came out it was in a way a relief. She didn’t have to pretend anymore. And she didn’t have any reason not to indulge herself. She could let the caged animal out.

 

Only she couldn’t. Not with the FBI watching her constantly – not trusting her ties to Reddington or to Tom. Not with Reddington’s people always there lurking – she was not about to risk getting in bed with one of them on accident. She’d been played once. She wasn’t going to let it happen again.

 

She was practically vibrating with sexual malice by the time they ended up at the safe house several months later. Dembe seemed to sense how dangerous she was and had wisely retreated to the other side of the massive forest hideaway but Reddington, as usual, seemed to enjoy playing with her. It was his fault that they needed to go to ground – his fault that there were international terrorists looking for her. And he could have just sent her away for a while to an FBI safe house and done whatever it is he did between Blacklisters, but no. He insisted he handle her safety personally. And Cooper, the bastard, had agreed on the basis that Reddington’s security details were less likely to have a plant, and since they knew there was a leak in the agency…

 

Liz dug her nails into the arm of the couch and tried to concentrate on anything except her anger at the situation. It wasn’t helping her manage her itch any – in fact making it worse.

 

There was the clink of glassware and the smell of scotch and a glass appeared next to her, hovering in the air held by those deadly fingers… those agile fingers. Fingers that she was sure knew exactly how to twist inside….

 

“Damnit.” Liz cursed, moving away quickly, nearly spilling the drink as she grabbed it in her hasty departure. She knocked the expensive scotch back in one go and kept walking till she hit the bedroom, slamming the door behind her. The shower was enormous and she turned on the three jets full blast as hot as they would go without burning her. What little relief her own fingers could bring came in seconds under the spray and didn’t help one tiny bit.

 

She’d shed her clothes in the bathroom without considering what to do when she was out, so grabbing a towel to dry her hair she opened the doors to the bedroom thinking she’d rummage in her bag for a night shirt. She hadn’t counted on Reddington to be worriedly pacing the room.

  
“Lizzie, are you alright? I hope…”

 

Whatever he’d been hoping died on his lips when he realized she was stark naked, dripping onto the expensive carpet, with her arms over her head rubbing a damp towel against her dark hair. She only paused a second before she continued to dry it, not bothering to cover herself or retreat to the bathroom. She knew better than to show him weakness.

 

“What are you doing in here?” Liz asked, trying to force her voice to calm as she walked in front of him to get into her bag where it rested on the bed. She dropped the towel at his feet and bent slightly to rummage in the bag for her hairbrush. She could feel him watching her as she started to undo the tangles.

 

“I was concerned there was something wrong, after your abrupt departure. I thought perhaps you’d a touch of food poisoning, running for the bathroom like that.” His voice was strained and a vindictive part of her nearly purred in satisfaction.

 

“I’m fine.” She answered, dropping the brush into the bag and pulling out her night shirt. The soft cotton falling over her breasts nearly made her knees go out but she managed to stifle the moan the sensation nearly tore from her throat. “I thought we had an agreement you’d stay out of my room.”

 

She didn’t turn to look at him, but she could feel him moving closer. “I was worried, I’m sorry. You’ve been a little off for a while now, Lizzie. Even Dembe’s commented that you seem not yourself.”

 

She couldn’t help the bitter laugh at that. “Red, I promise you I’m not sick.” She gave him a weak smile over her shoulder before turning back to her bag and starting to look for her sleeping pills. “At least not that kind of sick.” She murmured under her breath.

 

He caught her hand as she lifted up the bottle and took it from her, frowning at it. “Over the counter sleeping pills?”

 

“I don’t do well in new beds.” Liz defended, crossing her arms over her chest and glaring. “Besides, with you and Dembe here I’m pretty certain asleep you’ll sense danger an eon before I will awake. At least this way I’ll have a chance in hell of getting some rest.”

 

“You haven’t been sleeping.” He stated more than asked, taking in her tired eyes and the dark circles under them. “Liz, if you need to talk about Tom…”

 

Her bitter laugh cut him off. “Tom? Talk about Tom?” Liz sank down to the bed and closed her eyes tightly, her hands balling the bottom edge of her nightshirt into her fists. “I do not need to talk about Tom – or talk about anything, Red. I’m just… without an outlet at the moment.” She admitted it in a single breath, harsh and resigned. “I don’t miss anything about the man, other than <i>that</i> mediocre thought it was – it was highly convenient. Now, with my own agency tracking my every move, judging every single thing I do…”

 

When she opened her eyes and looked up Red was… red. His mouth was slightly open as he finally realized the problem and she noticed, with a wicked interest, that his eyes were glued to the top of her thigh where the bunched fabric of her nightshirt rested – and his pupils were telling her things that she was sure he wasn’t meaning to convey.

 

“Ah.” He stated, a little breathlessly. “I hadn’t quite anticipated that problem.”

 

Now that she’d confessed it, she couldn’t stop herself from venting. Moving to her feet and pacing she let out her frustration in a long growl. “It’s driving me insane!” She bit out, running an agitated hand through her hair. “I was not made for celibacy, Red. I’m not sure how much longer I can take this before I do something stupid – like jump Aram and slam him into a storage closet or something.”

 

“Why Aram?” Red asked, a little softly.

 

“Less likely to fight back.” Liz muttered. “He’d be so caught off guard he’d likely not even realize what we were doing until it was over. No chance to say no.”

 

That brought a laugh from the man. “Liz, no straight man in his right mind would say no to you jumping them.”

 

She snorted. “Yeah, well I’m fairly sure if I tried that on you, Dembe, or Cooper I’d end up knocked unconscious out of reflex.” She said it without thinking, and was somewhat surprised when the smile died on his face.

 

“You’ve thought of…”

 

She couldn’t help rolling her eyes. “Red, at this point I’m horny enough every male in the same room as me is in danger – you included. Which is why it’s probably a good idea if you leave.”

 

“What happens if I stay?” He asked, tone serious, a tell tale bulge starting to show in his impeccably tailored trousers.

 

They stood there, separated by just a few feet, for a long moment. Liz stared at him, fighting with what remained of her self-restraint. Her brain instantly profiled him without her command, updating the information she had on his suspected sexual habits, calculated her chances automatically and… then… snap. What little control she had was gone and she was across the room, hands cupping his head and legs wrapped around his waist as she attacked his mouth with everything she had.

 

They fell backward into the wall, knocking the picture of fruit off and onto the floor, the frame making a crashing sound and his head hitting the plasterboard hard enough to leave a small dent. His hands finally grabbed onto her, holding her up, and he twisted them to put her against the wall nearly as violently.

 

She bit his ear. He yanked her hair. There was ripping cloth and teeth and at one point she’s fairly certain Dembe’s worried face looked in to make sure they weren’t murdering each other – all before they made it to the bed.

 

It wasn’t sex – it was war with orgasms. Afterword Liz barely remembers any of it other than the glorious feeling of letting herself go – knowing that whatever she could give, Red could take and deliver back. There were no words of affection or endearments or apologies. Just a primal brutal mating that left skin under her nails and a pulled muscle in her left leg.

 

They lay panting next to each other, evidence of his climax easing out of her in a very distinctive trickle that made her rub her thighs together in satisfaction, and didn’t say a word for some time. When he eventually turned onto his side to look at her, she matched him, and they stared at one another until a gentle smile lit his face and he reached out to bring her closer.

 

The kiss this time was tender, searching, and she leaned into it, letting his hands trace her slowly this time. There would be finger shaped bruises on her arms and legs in the morning – possibly her throat too. There were bite marks on her breasts and inner thighs, angry red marks already blooming on her neck. He was no better, his scared back now added to by her nails, his arms bleeding slightly from how deeply she’d scratched him at some point. She’d bitten his lip hard enough to draw blood and there were fingernail shaped crescent wounds on his shaved head. eShe wasn’t sure if he was mapping her or the damage but she let him, laying back and closing her eyes as he started to trail soft kisses over every mark – both the new ones he’d left and every scar she’d acquired over the years.

 

They’d come together so violently she’d torn slightly, and when he slid back into her she hissed at the stretching. He paused until she squeezed him inside her and then resumed at a careful slow thrust that soon had her moaning under him, her muscles quivering from over use.

 

She watched his face as he came inside her a second time. His eyes were closed tightly and his mouth parted, a desperate keening leaving him that sounded like the saddest plea she’d ever heard. There were actually tears in his eyes when he collapsed onto her, holding her as tightly to him as he could, his weight crushing her.

 

She let him stay there as long as she could but eventuality the need to breath made her gently roll them so that he was next to her. He brought her back in close, burying his head in her chest, and she held him, stroking his barely there hair. He fell asleep first, and when she finally found rest it was with his gentle puffs of breath moving her hair.


	3. Identity

 

“You got to be ready at any time, Lizzie, any time. I know, you got a straight life now, and you’re getting married and working for the FBI.” Sam sighs and pushes the duffle bag across the table. “But you never know what can happen, Lizzybean. You know where all the stashes are, but I want you to take this and hide it where you can get to it – fast. For my peace of mind.”

 

Liz takes the bag and peaks inside. There is a pile of cash, of course, a gun with extra ammo – the serial number she’s sure is filed off- a couple IDs with her picture and various names on them, a passport. The usual.

  
“Thanks Dad.” She says, but he can tell she’s thinking he’s being paranoid. “You know the background checks all came back clean.”

 

She’d been a little upset when he’d told her he planned to have things be ‘fixed’ before the bureau ran their usual checks. She’d tried to convince him that it was better to just explain his criminal record than to try and hide it – he didn’t have the heart to tell her there was a whole hell of a lot more he was hiding than that – and that the names he’d always told her were their real ones were anything but. They’d been living under their current aliases so long there were good paper trails and it wasn’t that much work to make them look like they went back a little further. Especially for her. Kids like her weren’t supposed to have that much of a trail anyway.

 

“Told you not to worry about it. My friend is damn good. He’s the one that got you these ids. They are clean and untraceable. If you get in a jam, they are air tight.” Sam felt guilty asking Ray to get them, but as usual his friend didn’t even blink an eye. “With you half way across the country I won’ t be there if you need me. You’ll have to be able to take care of yourself until I can get to you – if something goes wrong.” He doesn’t mention that he won’t be the only one coming for her. If any of those ids get used, Ray will know something is wrong and the cavalry that would descend in that case would make the FBI look like an infective group of junior ROTC recruits.

 

“What could go wrong? I’ll be with the FBI.” Lizzie says, dryly, but zips the bag up and puts it next to her.

 

Sam breathes a sigh of relief. She’s not being unreasonable, and he can work with that. “Lizzie, baby, I don’t know that anything will, but in my line of work it’s better to be safe than dead.”

 

* * *

 

 

 

The morning was sunny, the white snow that coated the pines reflected the sunlight back and Liz took her time showering and redressing. The bed had been empty when she awoke, but still warm, and she could hear the sounds of movement outside the double doors of the bedroom. Dembe’s soft voice imparted some business or another, the clink of silverware.

 

When she immerged there was breakfast on the table and Red, his collar open and no attempt to hide their activates, was finishing the last of his plate. Dembe was getting a second helping of eggs and smiled at her. “Morning Agent Keen.” He offered, his white teeth flashing as he grinned wider. “I am sure you could use breakfast.”

 

“Quite.” She smirked, taking her seat, making no attempt at hiding the marks on her own neck either. Red chuckled, shaking out the pages of his paper, and she piled her plate with a good selection of the food she’s certain Dembe prepared for them.

“Agent Keen is rather a handful, Dembe.” Red advised with a smirk. “You should have stayed after you checked on us.” He watched her as he said it, to gauge her reaction.

 

Something of the predator must have shown in her eyes as she allowed herself the luxury of checking out Red’s right hand man, making a leisurely inspection with her eyes. She didn’t say anything, just smiled, as she saw his startled expression at her blatant behavior.

 

“Raymond…” Dembe shook his head. “Not an inappropriate topic for breakfast.”

 

“True.” Liz agreed, pouring herself more coffee. “Best save that conversation for dinner.”

 

Red’s bark of laughter was loud and hearty. “Lizzie, you surprise me yet again. Here I was thinking I’d offended your delicate sensibilities with such talk.”

 

Liz shrugged and took a bit of bacon. “Red, please. It’s been a while but I’ve had more than two men in my bed.” She paused. “Although, that really wasn’t a _bed_ exactly….”

 

They bantered for some time before Red rose announcing he was going back to bed. Dembe smirked and they watched him leave, heading back to her room. Liz pointedly did not follow.

 

“You enjoy making him wait for a change.” Dembe observed, taking a drink of his coffee.

 

Liz smiled, letting her natural slightly predatory self out – it felt rusty. “I do rather enjoy it.” She listened to the sounds Red was making as he exaggerated his movements to let her know he was crawling back into the bed they left not very long ago. “Doesn’t he have business or something to attend to today?”

 

“Not now.” Dembe shook his head. “He took care of what could not wait before you awoke. I can handle the remaining details.” Dembe’s look softened. “Go Elizabeth, enjoy this time. Raymond deserves a rest, as I am sure you do.”

 

Part of her should be positively appalled that she’s entered into such a relationship with Raymond Reddington, but that part feels foreign and distant to Liz as she leisurely finishes her coffee before going back to the bedroom. The longer Tom is gone – the further into Reds plans she goes – the more of Elizabeth Keen is stripped away. Lizzie is reappearing, clawing her way back to the surface, and while she willingly buried her so long ago – a necessity to join the FBI – Liz is finding that she wants her back. She misses that part of herself, that part that her father careful cultivated in abandoned auto shops and small town cafes. She knows now why he did it – what things he feared would find them, find her. Red hasn’t told her everything but she can sense the direction of the story. Besides, no matter how hard she tried she’d never really been normal. Why try and pretend now, when all the carefully built up facades she’d made had crumbled?

 

Red helped Sam to hide her – from people she suspects still hunt Red. Why they wanted her, that mystery, she’s unsure about but she suspects it has something to do with a life she doesn’t remember except in flashes of flames and pain and death. That life, so distant from the warmth and laughter of Sam’s house, the only father she’s ever known, seem like a nightmare that she’d rather not examine.

 

Regardless she’s tired of pretending – of curling herself into the tiny little box that she’d constructed in graduate school, the one the FBI found so attractive. She only finds it claustrophobic and boring in the extreme. Even if Tom hadn’t been whatever the hell he was, she’s sure she’d been close to the breaking point already. Her life, with him in the house, the thought of a child – she’d tried to want it but it was only ever hallow. It felt like living in a double leg cast, stuck in bed watching hours and hours of game shows.

 

Red, however, feels like flying down a highway without a helmet on a bike she just lifted from drunk motorcycle gang member who’d never thought that the pretty innocent college girl would spike his drink and steal his hog. Or maybe he feels more like the moments just before she goes in to lift the badge off a secret service member so she can sneak into the White House and get a picture of the Lincoln bedroom on a dare during her 8th grade class trip. Or, just maybe, he feels like the adrenaline rush after she’s taken down four men, the heat from her gun warming her hands as she watches Restler check them for a pulse.

 

He’s waiting for her, naked under the covers that he’s pulled up to his chin. He looks like a little boy waiting for his mother to tuck him in, and Liz feels an odd clenching in her gut. She feels protective of him, a feeling she’s not used to, not really. She protects the team because that’s her job. She protects assets because that’s her job. She would have protected her father if he ever needed it, which he didn’t. She would protect her aunt, because it’s her aunt (she doesn’t actually like her that much but Sam loved her, and she was always good to Liz, so there’s an obligation there.) She protects her dog because he loves her unconditionally and Liz returns that affection.

 

Maybe that’s what’s happening. Red loves her unconditionally, that’s fairly clear even if this new angle to their relationship adds an extra layer. Perhaps she’s just responding to it?

 

Liz has always had the problem of having to analyze her own emotions as if she was profiling herself. Cataloging what she should be feeling, comparing it to what she does feel, trying to explain the difference. When Cooper asked her to do it for him she’d been caught off guard, but the longer she works with the team the more she thinks that they are like that. They all have problems feeling what normal people feel, and they all pretend sometimes in order to make life a little easier. Cooper with his wife, all of them with the world.

 

Some of what she’s feeling must be showing on her face because Red holds open the covers and welcomes her in with a serious expression.

 

“It’s alright, Lizzie. You don’t have to pretend with me. I accept you, dents and all.” He brushes a hand over her hair and kisses her head. “You don’t need to put it into context – just feel it.”


	4. Hiding

 

“It was a lovely service.”

 

The words sound so stupid to her but she lets them say them. Lets them see her cry. Because they expect her to cry and because, for once, she feels they way they expect her to feel.

 

But there’s also this hollow part of her – this gaping hole in her middle – and she can’t explain this pit of _nothingness_ that’s growing and growing and growing.

 

She’s afraid it will consumer her like a black hole.

 

Sam was in many ways her tie to the real world – to things that weren’t the Post Office, and Reddington, and this life she’s living, and loving, and having to pretend to hate. In reality it’s Tom she hates, and the house, and taking out the garbage. She hates her autumn colored blouses and her JcPenny suites. She hates the plain sensible shoes and professional haircuts. She wants to die it purple and wear black lace and dance naked in the park with a bottle of rum. She wants to relieve that time, when Sam, her father, was alive and well and the world consisted of nothing more harsh than playing at being whatever high school stereotype she felt like for the week, bouncing from school to school, and making him laugh at her antics as she kept up four lives just for fun.

 

Liz wants to be anything but who she is, just for a little while. It’s safe being someone else – it’s a challenge and a lark and she’s got the IDs still.

 

She almost does it – almost goes for the bag and the passport and the cash she’s got hidden. Not under the floorboards, no. Not even in the house. Half of it’s tucked inside Hudson’s doggy carrier in shed, under a fake bottom. Because if she’s running she’s taking the dog. The other half of the ids and cash is in a storage unit she’s paid for in cash and money orders since her dad gave them to her – tucked inside a box of thrift store clothes two sizes too small for her and with ‘skinny clothes’ scribbled on the outside with a half dried up sharpie, on to of a broken down chest of drawers next to a rusty bicycle.

 

By now she’s a good idea it’s Reddington that gave her father those documents, or one of his people. And he’d find her instantly if she used them. He may even know where she’s got them stashed in that mystifying way he seems to know everything about her. (In his defense if he knew Sam then he probably knew what Sam taught her and it was his trick to buy old storage units with the contents intact to add his own collections too. So maybe that one he could figure out without the advanced network of spies.)

 

What scares her is she’s fairly sure Red wouldn’t make her go back. He’d probably just sit next to her, scratch Hudson’s ears, and tell her about the time his second grade teacher forgot him at recess.

 

In her darker moments, on the way back to her life, she imagines that if she did run and he did follow, she’d end up like Dembe- his shadow. His minion. His friend.

 

There’s a packet of bells in the box of her father’s things that she brings back. Tom looks at them and asks if they go in the Christmas box. Liz takes them and when Tom is at work she packs them in tissue and hides them in the bottom of Hudson’s cage. All but one – that one she adds to her coat pocket, sewing it into the lining. Later, at the Post Office, it jingles when she takes off her coat and Red looks up sharply then smiles sadly, knowingly.

 

She lifts Coopers phone twice that day just to pass the time, slipping it back into a different pocket each time. Red watches her do it, smirks, and says nothing.

 

* * *

 

Their time in the safe house is both shorter and longer than she wants. Raymond Reddington is without argument the best lover she’s ever had. And the most exhausting. What should surprise her is how much he likes it when she leads – how he melts under attentions. How a nibble to the right spot makes his eyes roll back in his head and turns him to putty in her hands. If she told Restler that he’d think she was joking – not Reddington, not that world renowned concierge of crime.

 

But it’s true – Red relishes giving her control and letting her twist him about. He glorifies in it. The image of him on his knees for her, her fingers buried in his ass as he moans and fucks himself on her hand is forever burned into her mind. He kissed her feet that night – worshiped her with slavish devotion – and then begged, actually _begged_ , for the privilege of tasting her. There’s no going back from that, Liz admits to herself, as she rides the elevator to the team room, no going back at all.

 

Of course in the daylight, outside that sanctuary of linen and blankets he’s all business. But Liz knows – she knows what he’s like at his weakest most vulnerable point and it doesn’t happen with torture or drugs or threats. No, it happens with soft touches, kind murmurs, affectionate nibbles. He expects to be slapped, to be punished, to be beaten down. No, it’s by doing the opposite that he caves to her, turns into the mindless wonderful creature she’s seen him become and it makes her lethal to think about it.

 

She wants to have him like that again – and she wants to protect him at any costs. It shows, if you know to look for it, the extra possessiveness in her movements as they hunt the next blacklister. She’s colder, harder, and more herself than she’s ever been. She’s killed before, the team knows it. No one really thought to ask if she was alright after the first time, they must have thought she’d been in the field before how well she handles it, but when she takes down the suspect this time there’s a casualness to it that makes Restler shift nervously during the debrief.

 

Liz would be worried about it herself if there was anymore Liz.

 

Lizzie isn’t. Lizzie will do whatever she has to because there’s a job to do, and Red waiting for her at the end of it, and she’s been on this path her entire life.

 


End file.
